Entertainment

This Epic World Cup's True Legacy? Hopefully Not Soccer

At left, Brazil star Neymar celebrates scoring his side's first goal of the 2014 World Cup; at right, children play by a demolished home in the Favela do Metro shantytown, where residents were forced to leave to make way for the global mega-event.

Take the brilliance of James Rodriguez, the impassioned fans from Chile, the heroic goalkeeping of Tim Howard, the — eh, never mind. We could go on, but it all leads to one thing: the World Cup drama that captures an entire planet, sports fans or not, because you simply can't find anything like it anywhere else.

The 2014 World Cup was a true soccer classic, one that will be remembered forever as an all-around standout on the pitch. But hopefully its most lasting meaning won't have much to do with sports at all.

We'll get to this World Cup's painful, yet hopeful, legacy in a minute. But first let's take a moment to appreciate the good, starting with the fans.

They flew in from all over the world, decked out in national jerseys, scarves and sombreros to create a truly inspiring scene. In Manaus, English and Italian fans reveled in a once-in-lifetime atmosphere, heat be damned.

Mexico fans, en route to Brazil for the 2014 World Cup, at Charlotte Douglas International Airport on June 11, 2014.

Image: Mashable/Sam Laird

When Brazil kicked off the World Cup with a close win over Croatia, locals in Manaus descended to the banks of an Amazonian river to watch the match on giant public screens. It was a scene of joy — just like days later in Rio de Janeiro, when thousands piled onto Copacabana Beach to watch the USA's thrilling-last minute win against Ghana.

And the goals! Players scored them at a record-setting clip in the tournament's group stage, with 136 before reaching the knockout round. Then there were the moments that made our eyes well up.

A photo of a heartbroken Brazil fan had a better backstory than anyone could have imagined. Brazil star David Luiz's consoling of Rodriguez after the Seleção eliminated Colombia in the quarterfinals might have been the World Cup's best moment of all; it was as sweet as his tearful interview following a humiliating loss to Germany debacle was wrenching.

Indeed, the World Cup had so many magical moments — on and off the pitch — that protesters who wanted to call attention to the tournament's larger context often saw their messages fall on deaf ears.

"You ask why people are more interested in the World Cup?" an activist named Julia Mariano told me in Rio de Janeiro. "It's the fucking World Cup. You can't do much about that."

This despite the fact that the 2014 edition was held against the starkest of the backdrops, in a country with one of the world's most drastic gaps between rich and poor. The gap between who global mega-events serve and the hardship experienced by millions upon millions around the world was perhaps never laid out in more obvious fashion.

It's just fine to marvel over golazos and emotional moments. But the 700 families who were evicted from their homes in a favela near Rio's Estádio Maracanã to make room for a parking lot that was never built see those goals differently. As do thousands with similar stories around Brazil.

Which brings us to that legacy.

A mural by Brazilian street artist Paulo Ito, of a crying child who is served a soccer ball to appease his hunger, covers a portion of a school wall in Sao Paulo, Brazil, Friday, May 23, 2014.

Image: Andre Penner/Associated Press

Athletic brilliance and a global party overshadowed larger issues during the cup. But one hopes that script will flip in the coming months as Brazil gears up for a national election and deals with a brewing water crisis in its biggest city. Meanwhile, a $300 million stadium in one of Brazil's poorest states sits unused after hosting four World Cup matches.

We'll certainly remember the brilliant soccer played in Brazil this summer. But more importantly, perhaps we'll look back at the 2014 World Cup in 10 or 20 years as the moment that finally got the humans of planet earth to corral the spiraling cost and decadence of global mega-events like it and the Olympics.

"I think we are at a turning point in the history of mega-events and I think the turning point will lead to a very much reduced ambition towards infrastructure connected with these events," Wolfgang Maennig, an Olympic gold medalist and economics professor at Hamburg University, told Reuters in June.

Hopefully that will be this World Cup's true legacy: The mega-event that shook us by the collar and made us tone down the obscenity.

Figuratively, if not geographically, far from the World Cup spotlight, a man in a no. 9 Brazil shirt begs for money from passing motorists in Manaus.

Image: Sam Laird/Mashable

Before Neymar and Messi dazzled us on the field, the World Cup's social costs were a dominant storyline leading up to Brazil. A host of troubling allegations emerged about how Qatar won the rights to host the 2022 World Cup, which hundreds of migrant workers have already died building. Soccer soon swept that controversy aside, but not before FIFA's major sponsors issued negative statements about FIFA's image and dealings.

Corporate PR concerns may not seem like much. But from Adidas to Coca Cola, when sponsors criticize their partner days before a global event, that's a quite a big deal that can foreshadow change to come. Just ask Donald Sterling.

The 2018 World Cup is set to be held in Russia, the country that famously mismanaged this year's Winter Olympics then held them amid open repression of homosexuals days before Vladimir Putin launched a partial invasion of neighboring Ukraine.

A Cossack militiaman attacks Nadezhda Tolokonnikova and a photographer as she and fellow members of the punk group Pussy Riot, including Maria Alekhina, center, in the pink balaclava, stage a protest performance in Sochi, Russia, on Wednesday, Feb. 19, 2014.

Image: Morry Gash/Associated Press

While it's too close to the fact to do anything about that now, the real tests concern 2022. Will Qatar still get to keep that World Cup after internal and external investigations wrap up? And what will happen with the 2022 Winter Olympics that, in another sign of a possible changing tide, no one really seems to want.

Only time will if we've reached a tipping point in the bizarro universe of sports mega-events, the peak before they simmer to something slightly more modest. But it does feel plausible.

In Brazil, I talked to many soccer fans who said their love of the beautiful game faded as they continued to see firsthand the juxtaposition between shiny new stadiums and countrymen living in abject poverty.

Those were Brazilians talking specifically about Brazil. But if mega-events like the 2014 World Cup continue rampaging on with little heed for their surroundings, like some drunk blowhard at the reception buffet? Those Brazilians' defeated, dejected and disinterested attitude is one we'll see spread to more sports fans the world over.

At least, one hopes so. Sometimes sports — no matter how dazzling — just aren't worth the price.

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